It’s a great time to start watching Haphead, the cyberpunk webseries I wrote/created — we’ve got half the first season online now! Plus, we’re doing a watchalong of the first season this Sunday afternoon — an online collective viewing of the full 72 minutes of season one for people who have (or are willing to) chipped in a couple bucks. Plus a Twitter Q&A at the end! Details below.

Haphead is way better than it has any right to be. Little gems of technosocial extrapolation glitter throughout Munroe’s screenplay: upscale malls with perky automated security systems, apologetically refusing entry to consumers with “mixed-income backgrounds”; insurance companies with their own paramilitary SWAT teams to go after false claimants. The plot itself— at first glance a straightforward lefty bit of capitalist-bashing— takes turns you might not expect… Star Elysia White is a real find; whether Max is mourning or raging, pondering some mystery or cracking wise, her performance is spot-on throughout.

We’re putting the finishing touches on the first season of Haphead, an 8 episode webseries I wrote and created, and we’re going to watch all 70 minutes at the Royal Theatre a week today. It’s the whole deal — q&a with cast/crew, afterparty for everyone, and the theatre is a beautiful venue — they’re even licensed for the occasion. Our last Royal screening sold out, so we recommend ordering tickets online to avoid disappointment.

If you’re not in Toronto, you’ll want to subscribe via the service of your choice at haphead.com as the first episode is going online immediately after the screening.

Haphead is the story of a girl who’s literally empowered by videogames.

Ten years from now, a new haptic peripheral makes videogames so immersive that people learn skills just by playing. Maxine makes less than minimum wage at the factory where they make them, so she decides to become an unofficial beta tester by stealing one for herself. At home, her favorite rabbit-ninja game gets a whole lot more punishing, with the haptic feedback loop beating lethal skills into her muscle memory. Which is good: she needs to level up quick once her employer discovers her on-the-job theft.

Luckily, she’s not alone. There are other hapheads out there, with a variety of game-trained abilities. But while some of them are kindreds, one of them brings death….

It’s pretty incredible seeing these projects come together, each successive iteration getting closer and closer to what we imagined. And as the poster above declares, this is not a No Media Kings production — it’s an entirely new and exciting thing. We’ll be announcing more about that at the screening!

We’re Kickstarting post-production for Haphead, my cyberpunk web series about a girl who’s literally empowered by videogames. Consider backing it and get some rewards like parkour lessons and producer credits!

Running a Kickstarter is a lot of work, but it’s work we need to do anyway — spreading the word about our new project. As always, we’re trying to balance the hype with a good deal of content.

First, the Kickstarter video starts with a teaser using the brand new footage we shot in the summer. Then we created a new reward with our talented artists, a calendar of post-apocalyptic pin-ups called Fallen Toronto.

Yesterday we posted a gallery of amazing production stills like the one above. Today we released a recruitment ad voiced by a local radio personality, “Fearless” Fred Kennedy from Edge 102.1. I’m really happy with it — it’s a parody of the “Get into the Game Industry!” ads that aim to profit from people’s dreams of getting to work in their favourite medium. Listen to it here.

About a month ago we got the word that Haphead, our near-future videogame subculture webseries, received funding. It’s a lot of the same folks I’ve been making lo-fi sci-fi no-budget films with since 2007 — except this time we’re getting paid a living wage for it! Pretty wild. Having a budget also means we can consider renting locations (like the train car above!) as well as accelerate the process — we’ll be releasing the first 45-60min (AKA “Season 1″) in January, instead of the 3 year odyssey that Ghosts With Shit Jobs was. I also won’t be wearing as many hats (just three: executive producer/creator/writer) but I know from the awesome proof-of-concept trailer our team produced with minimal interference from me that it’s in very, very good hands.

If you want to jump on the Haphead train before our mid-August shooting begins, this is what we’re still looking for!

a large abandoned warehouse or factory we can rent for a day (something like this pic)

I first heard about Vodo a few years back when they were using BitTorrent as a form of alternative distribution for science fiction shorts and web series — something we did as well with our 2007 effort Infest Wisely. Currently they’re trying out a pay-what-you-want model, and they approached us to include Ghosts With Shit Jobs in their indie sci-fi Otherworlds bundle. They’ve brought together a great bunch of sci-fi shorts, experimental videogames (Tale of Tales) and speculative graphic novels (Cory Doctorow), and we get a bit of money whether you pay-what-you-want for the main tier or “unlock” our movie on the second tier. (I guess we’ll have to update our profit-reporting post after this!) Incidentally, this is the first time you can buy a DRM-free digital version of our movie since the Kickstarter.

We started making Ghosts With Shit Jobs in 2009, released it in 2012 and screened it in 25 cities thanks to a Kickstarter campaign through 2012-13. We’ve learned a ton and recently applied what we know now to a proof-of-concept trailer for a new project — it’s called Haphead, and features the infinitely stretching electronics factory pictured above. And bunny-ninja fights.

But before we move on we thought we’d talk frankly about the numbers behind our lo-fi sci-fi feature.

We attracted attention to the project by being up front about our original $4000 production costs, and now we want to do a final accounting in the hope that it’s useful and/or interesting to other indie filmmakers. There’s a certain amount of pressure to not talk about this stuff when it’s not super-impressive — that somehow it hurts our credibility — but we think it’s useful to show people what very minor success looks like.

Ghosts With Shit Jobs cost $20,180.97 to create and promote and earned a gross of $39,317.18 $40,917.18.Continue reading »

Ten years from now, videogames are so immersive that teenagers learn lethal skills just by playing. They’re called hapheads.

The folks I made Ghosts With Shit Jobs with made this trailer I adapted from a book-length story I’m working on. Don’t know if we can honestly call what we do lo-fi sci-fi anymore — with fight scenes and full-on special effects, it’s way more in the mold of traditional action sci-fi. I’m thinking what’ll set it apart is the characterization of the father & daughter (my emotional entry into the story, thinking about my relationship with my daughter in 10 years) and the subcultural mileau that’ll emerge. This trailer a proof-of-concept thing meant to rally the interest we need to get it made — so if you’d like to see it, share it.

I’ve been getting together with folks I made Ghosts With Shit Jobs with to make a trailer for our next project, Haphead — starts shooting on Sunday, get in touch if you’d like to help out. We’re going to be working with the same actress who starred in “Just Ella” — a short I wrote/directed for the Lo-fi Sci-fi 48 Hour Film Challenge. It screened at Toronto After Dark (my favourite Toronto film fest) a few months back, and now you can watch it here.

“Just Ella” posits a future overrun by gibbering monstrosities. Ella takes refuge in a “the Ossington Safehouse, a collectively-run space dedicated to human sovereignty.” But despite doing the assigned tasks on the chore list, the Safehouse isn’t safe — the terrors outside are nothing compared to those within.

Contains perhaps the first cinematic example of autocomplete used for a dramatic reveal.

I remixed a 60 Minutes puff piece with one of the founders of Twitter so that it tells a story of open source bravery and genuine disruption. It’s part of my Postopias series. How it came to be and why I made it is below the jump.

Quite flattered and surprised to announce that I’ll be the artist-in-residence at one of North America’s largest museum galleries, the AGO. During February and March they’re providing a studio, a stipend and institutional support to make art — in my case, game art — and engage the public. What the public engagement will look like is still in the planning stages but I’ll be posting more about it as event details firm up.

Co-director Tate Young interviewed BIFF-goers earlier this year on what they thought about the premise of our flick, and got lots of great city shots to boot, in this 6.5 minute mini-doc.

It’s now four years since we began this project and it’s been quite a trip — literally and figuratively. Since its London, England premiere last year we’ve toured with the movie to nearly 20 cities across the world. Figured it merits its own commemorative tour t-shirt, which you can buy at cost for the next week (mens | ladies). It’s got all the cities on the back!

As an aside, you should enjoy TIFF while it lasts — it ends in 2019 after cultural funding disappears completely. BIFF buys all the red carpets at an auction afterwards.

I was lucky enough to be on the narrative jury this year for the Independent Games Festival. One of my favourite games was Kentucky Route Zero, a lovely point-and-click adventure with an anachronistic story that dips into magical realism and Flannery O’Connor. Like the writing, the art and cinematography is evocative and assured, and indeed took the Excellence In Visual Art award (up against strong competition from my Guilded Youth collaborator, Matt Hammill).

Do you know the Latin phrase “solvitur ambulando”? Used by the wandering scholars of medieval Europe, it means “walking solves it”. It’s always been true for me, as someone for whom walking is both wonderfully meditative and creatively inspiring. I started thinking about using this sentiment in a game context, and came up with an idea that coder Callum Hay and sound designer/composer Adam Axbey were both into, too. We realized a proof-of-concept this past weekend at the Toronto Game Jam.

Wonderland: A Solvitur Ambulando Mystery is an app for the iPhone. You listen to an audio story set in Toronto’s Junction neighbourhood in 1915 — the projectionist of the Wonderland, one of the city’s first movie theatres, makes a grim discovery in the aisle one morning. You can listen to the beginning of the superbly produced and acted clip after the jump.Continue reading »

Today is the launch of KTR 451, a game I developed for the Toronto Public Library. Drawing on the themes and characters in Fahrenheit 451 (the TPL’s One Book this year), it’s a simple alternate reality game — part scavenger hunt, part audio drama — and people in Toronto can play it by calling the phone number above. There’s three missions, one per week, until a live event on April 22nd.

Pipe Trouble is an arcade-style game like many of the “pipe-connecting” genre — except you’re connecting natural gas pipelines in Alberta. Build too close to farms and livestock and risk incurring an eco-saboteur’s explosive wrath. Build too far around and your boss gets upset that you’re wasting money. It’s a serious game that attempts to model the tensions in the region while providing engaging gameplay, with a score by members of Fucked Up (who I think should be credited as Fracked Up, given the issue we’re addressing).

Update: Due to the Sun’s sloppy journalism, there’s been a bit of a mediafuror, but unfortunately in a “taxpayer dollars paid for this?!” vein rather than about the more important environmental or industry issues the game addresses. We’ve issued a press release in response.

Put your trillion dollar coins away! Ghosts With Shit Jobs is available to rent for as little as $4.99. Our lo-fi sci-fi mockumentary about the slums of Toronto in 2040 is now in wide digital release at the links below.

To help support this we’re offering to do 20 videochat Q&As between now and when the Debt Ceiling falls in. To enter, sign up over here and plan a GHOSTS screening party of five or more people in January and February. Then, if you’re one of the lucky 20, one of our lo-fi faces will be beamed via sci-fi into your very home!

Just booked the Vancouver screening for Ghosts With Shit Jobs (Tickets | Facebook) for two weeks hence — that makes it a round dozen! Plus, doing a talk at the Full Indie game meetup group. Been 5 years since I been in the city, looking forward to it. Click through to see the rad poster.Continue reading »

The verdict is in: people really liked Guilded Youth (it just took 3rd in the Interactive Fiction Competition, and 1st in the Ms. Congeniality competition) but hated the ending. Of the fourteen or so reviews I’ve seen over half of them expressed being disappointed by the ending or finding it abrupt.

A previous novel of mine, Everyone In Silico, also had an unconventional ending. I figured it’d be irresponsible of me to tie everything up with a neat little bow, given the complexity of the politics. Depriving readers of their resolution and catharsis made some of them upset, but it was by design and I stand by it.

Not so with Guilded Youth. I just kind of dropped it when I was done. Me and Matt considered it a lark, a nostalgic trifle, so much so that we didn’t anticipate people would care what happened to the quickly sketched characters. But of course we’re delighted. And because it’s not a physical book like Silico – and the digital format allows it — I decided to add two more scenes to give people more time with the awkward adventurers. It’s still charmingly low resolution, but with more of a resolution!

I'm Jim Munroe, a novelist who stopped publishing with HarperCollins to showcase and propagate indie culture alternatives to Rupert Murdoch-style consolidation. This site is a launching pad for the stuff I make, articles about how to make them, and a source of my two main food groups: inspiration and feedback. Want more details on my methods and work? Check here.

Episode 6 is now online! Lizzie Blitz After you watch episode 6, follow future vlogger Lizzie Blitz as she takes you into the secret world of the haptic video-gaming scene – if only she doesn’t get found out. See what…Read more ›

Launched for a live audience at our Annual General Meeting in January, you can now watch YYZ Gameshow episode 1 in its entirety online. YYZ Gameshow is a new series about Toronto game culture that we’ve been working on with Curio and Bell Local, and...

Unless this cold breaks in a few days (apologies if it does), nobody’s going outside again ever! While we can’t guarantee you have enough food to survive the winter, we can make sure you have enough indie games. And if you do feel like venturing...

For the first time in over three years the Hand Eye Society is holding an open call to showcase your game on site at the Toronto Comics Arts Festival (May 9th and 10th) as part of this year’s Comics vs Games. It’s a unique opportunity...

Some more February events… for a short month, it packs a lot in! Add these Toronto videogame events and more to your googlecal for easy access to the latest updates. Tonight there’s a Tetris Tournament in Kensington Market! This Saturday (AKA V-Day) you should totally check out some great...

Last Saturday was had our Annual General Meeting, where we voted in an unprecedented four new board members. Welcome Cindy, Chris, Sara and Adam! We also debuted our new webseries pilot about Toronto game culture, YYZ Gameshow, which is currently airing on Bell Fibe (channel 1217)...